Lewis and Clark has let me in, they've sent my financial aid packet suggesting I borrow $41k per year *Kara passes out*, and I'm getting all excited. This is a great school, and if I decide to persue environmental law - one of my top two choices - I will be at the best law school in the country. My parents live about 10 minutes from the school, it's a drive through a suburbanized forest with no traffic to speak of, my dad will cook dinner probably four nights a week, and I won't have much in the way of distractions (read: friends, my boyfriend :( ). The four hour train ride to Seattle would provide lots of time for reading and writing and given current gas prices probably cost little more than driving.
And might I mention again that this school has actually let me in.
Seattle U is an hour bus ride or a 25-90 minute drive depending on traffic. And before you suggest I read on the bus, that is not going to happen. I get motion sick in any situation in which I am not watching the road or sleeping. Shit, that's like the only con I have for Seattle U. It's not insignificant, however, living a (relatively) normal life with Nick outweighs that quite significantly. Seattle U is technically ranked lower than Lewis and Clark, but they have a health law focus, which Lewis and Clark does not; this is path that rounds out my "top two". Plus, once you're not in an Ivy League school or Stanford, it's probably sufficient that both of these schools are good enough to be ranked at all. Oh yeah, let's not forget that this school hasn't actually admitted me.
Fcuk. I guess I'm trying to get used to the idea of moving back to Portland. If Seattle doesn't let me in I really think this will be fine. Meh.
Admission Status (Seattle University)
Name: Kara Govro
Date Application Received: 1/18/05
Admission Status: File Complete - Decision Pending
File Last Updated On: 4/4/05
My new job is everything I imagined in terms of "pros". It is in fact very busy, and I get to do what I consider the fun parts of reception - phones and clients at the desk. The scheduling isn't that tricky, although the 20/20 program has a lot of very specific appointments that must be scheduled in a certain sequence, and that's taking some getting used to.
The cons are also much like I expected - there are some people I'm not wild about, but at least everyone seems to be fully on their rocker and no one appears to be out for the blood of anyone else. As the new person, though, they are all venting to me so I get to hear from everyone what they think of everyone else.
I still like wearing the uniform - choosing clothes in the morning used to be quite the challenge, and these pants don't make *anyone* look good, so even though I work with a lot of thin, buff, tan people I don't get too much of a complex about it. =P
All the people I work with complain about how expensive the food is, but it just *isn't*. It's well within my (albeit large) food budget and way better than the food I was getting for that much dinero at my old job. The Bistro has tasty tasty stuff.
***
Crap. I opened the door to let in some fresh air and I'm getting a bonus spider.
I'm just not sure I can be trusted with anything less indestructable. This comes up now because my computer just fell off my lap, wide open, onto the ground. And it's fine. I have pulled this same graceful manuever many times; often from higher places onto less cushy flooring. I have also spilled Diet Coke and coffee with cream directly onto this laptop (while open and running) at least three times. The keys were sticky for awhile, and I had to pop some off and try to soak up the disaster, but the computer survived. I also somehow managed to completely mangle ther part of my power cord that plugs into the computer itself, but it lives on. I'm just not sure that a computer any more delicate than my 12" iBook could handle me. :)
I really think they could have done better with the ergonomics of this contraption. I know they were trying to make it compact yet smart, but I thought we were far enough along in the evolution of video games that they could do this without making it hit nasty pressure points on the players' hands and cause unpleasant wrist bends. The very first time I picked it up I thought it was awkward to hold onto, and now, as a Luminesce addict, I feel the same way. What do you think is my liklihood of winning in court if I sue for the onset of carpal tunnel?
Checking my mail on yahoo and I see "so and so win 7th Amazing Race" . . . goddammit. If you use Yahoo (I'm sure none of you do), and you don't want your Thursday evening to be totally suspenseless, avert your eyes!
Except it's not apparent to me how to make it clickable. In the meantime, copy and paste. Totally worth a few minutes. :)
http://toccionline.kizash.com/films/1001/138/
Edit: Linked her URL for convenience. --Nick
Should I or should I not feel guilty about taking a reception job knowing that I will be leaving in 3.5 months. I vote no, and I support this with the fact that I will only have health benefits for .5 of those months. *stingy, grumble grumble* What do you vote?
Erin: No
Steve: No
Marc: Only a tiny bit
Nick: Yeah, but that's me, and I'm not saying more than that because I don't want to get in trouble. :) (that was heavily paraphrased, btw)
Me: No
Online community I polled: 29 No, 1 yes.
:)
*sigh*
Guess what. I just called Seattle University because I had a change of heart - I had previously not sent in my "please keep me on the wait list" form and decided that I might as well. Who knows, you know? Well, I come to find out that I am on the "top hold wait list" which is ranked higher than the regular wait list. They are looking - this part I don't get - at the regular wait list first, to fill left over spots, and then going to the top hold wait list. Perhaps they are looking for things that absolutely lunge at them from the pile of regular waiters before moving on to us super waiters. I got the impression from the woman I talked to that I had a *darn* good chance given that I was on the "top hold" wait list.
And do you want to know what caused this change of heart? Lewis and Clark called . . . I'm in. Lewis and Clark is a DAMN GOOD LAW SCHOOL. And they want a deposit by Tuesday.
Jesus H. Christ. I was just coming to terms with being mediocre . . .
One of our resident smartasses just found me unloading the dishwasher in the kitchen. This is one of many tasks I will not miss in the slightest and one of the many tasks that makes me seeth about having a BA and a lame job. For some reason - probably because he has no sensitivity and little good sense - he decided to query me about my new job and then proceed to raz me about it.
"You know, if I sent my daughter to school and she got a degree and didn't do anything with it, I think I'd kick her butt."
He had a few other stupid quips, and I responded as I would to someone with whom I generally didn't get along and had no professional affiliation. It was rather like an out of body experience . . . I started responding, then realized that this was someone who certainly considered himself my superior in many ways, and then continued responding! It was awesome. "Bite me" and "Kiss my ass" both left my mouth, along with some other "back off, jerk" type of phrases and a brief comment about how I gave myself quite enough grief about that without any help, thank you very much. He left in a hurry and Diane, a woman who has three beautiful children and supports them all by herself as a Project Assistant (the second least glamorous job at Otak), commended me for telling him off. Apparently I'm not the first person who has gotten him back on his heels when he's meddling in things that are none of his damn business. All that said, I didn't know I had it in me. And I'm really glad I did.
They make me angry. For me they are slightly less prevalent than paper cuts (common office job hazard), but so much more painful it's not even funny. And to add insult to injury some people don't get them. Ever. *pout*
Kara alluded to some issues with my allergies.
I did in fact talk to the allergist about it, but not under the circumstances that I might have imagined.
I went in yesterday to get my "final" ramp-up shot. At the end of the mandatory half an hour waiting period after the shot (which I've always been mildly annoyed about - I know they want to guard against any kind of bad reaction and I'm sure they've seen such reactions, but it seems like such a hassle when I'm sitting through it), I mentioned that I was slightly wheezy, which I hadn't been when I came in.
Three nurses, a doctor, and a big immunotherapy-reaction kit later, I see just how seriously they take these things.
I've had asthma all my life - wheezing is just a thing that happens to me now, and I don't even really think twice about it being a big deal anymore. You take a few puffs on the inhaler and move on. Apparently when it's triggered by a shot, though, they worry about something worse developing.
So I'm getting my lungs, oxygen levels, blood pressure, and heart rate all checked at the same time, and the doctor comes in and makes sure that I'm feeling OK before they shoot me with something. Epinephrine, as it turns out. Which is designed to undo the effects of an allergic/asthmatic reaction, effectively undoing the shot I just got (so much for it being the "final" ramp-up shot).
"This is going to feel a bit weird, maybe like you've had too much coffee."
Yeah, I don't drink coffee, and if that's what you feel like when you do, not sure I ever will.
Two minutes later, my legs are tingling like crazy and I can't hold still - instant anxiety! Apparently the reaction is similar to what you get when you have an adrenaline rush, except more pronounced and more sudden. Couple that with some Prednisone, which has similar effects, and it was an interesting morning.
Pretty trippy experience, bouncing around the next few hours before the accompanying crash that had me just about falling asleep in my office.
At least it ended there, since the reaction was minor - in the checklist of what to do in the case of a shot reaction which I glanced at, the steps up to what happened to me seemed to be pretty standard and written out in detail. If we'd had to go any further, everything degnerated into weird code and abbreviations that I assume mean bad things would happen.
In any case, maintainence is put off for a bit - they're going to slow ramp me for another number of months because of this. And the doctor thinks that it's going to be at least a year before I'll start seeing full benefits of the treatment. So though a cat is still questionable, hope's not completely lost yet.
--Nick
Why is it that everything I have a passion for pays crap? Government, animals, advocacy, environmental work . . . why can't I think coding is super neat? Why can't I like tricking people into buying things that they neither want nor need and make a big commission? Why can't I enjoy the manipulation and grand-standing that is the "business world"? Fuck. If only I didn't feel some sense of responsibility in this world. Yeah, I know, this sounds depressed. But I forgot my meds for three days so this is what you get. Grr.